Vitals
by bj
Summary: Victim #1: Jed. We may be victims, but chances are we're not alone.


Disclaimer: The West Wing and all related materials are not mine. I'm dealing with it.  
  
Author's Note: Aie. Further continuation of the Victims series, and yet a beginning of sorts, since it's Jed. Catch up on the other stories at http://www.angelfire.com/bc2/allcanadiangirl  
  
  
  
Vitals  
  
By BJ Garrett  
  
  
  
Studying the statistics. The bedroom is lit like a late Renaissance painting. Bruegel, Altdorfer. You are alone, one figure, studying the statistics in moody lamplight. It doesn't matter what statistics. How many women under 30 eat chicken on a regular basis (53%, 2-4 times a week). The gender differential in the field of astronomy (too big). The chances of dying on a Thursday.  
  
Seemingly cool, seemingly rational, seemingly one-dimensional. You know.  
  
You know the numbers open out into seas of assumption, badly-worded questions, stock samples. You know the full sparkling depth of the truth of the good numbers.  
  
You know the good numbers by feel. The ink doesn't seem fuzzed on good numbers. The paper doesn't feel rough or like murder, the pollsters and the statisticians meet your eyes with good numbers. You have a head for numbers. You know.  
  
Abbey has said you have a heart for numbers.  
  
You know good numbers the way a priest knows good confessees. The inflection of their voices, the hush of their breath, the beating of their heart on the paper, through the grille, under the weight of their sins and inaccuracies.  
  
Thoth weighing the hearts of the dead against a feather.  
  
Reading the statistics. No minority is alone. There are hundreds of minorities, you imagine them all lining up to get their due, to be raised, to be praised and honoured and to have Jefferson call them created equal. You imagine the dead lining the great empty Hall of Two Truths, their equal hearts on scales.  
  
The numbers are isolated by hard returns on the page. Each person, each number, separate. Church and state. Men and women. Parent and child. Dichotomies of loneliness.  
  
With a sigh, you put your glasses aside. The numbers aren't making any sense. They still want you, and you know they're stupid. You know they're taking the chance that you'll die on a Thursday. Or a Monday. Or any day, really. You could die.  
  
You could be hit by a bus. You wonder if the Secret Service is paid to take buses as well as bullets. MS isn't fatal.  
  
So they're taking the chance with anybody, really. Anybody could die. They could die.  
  
Alone in their minorities of one, shuffling down to have their sins weighed against a feather. You think with a small smile that perhaps that is a myth the Church should have adopted. It works. It certainly scares the shit out of you, the prospect of your heart not being equal to the weight of feather, the idea of your soul being swallowed by the Devourer, part lion, part hippopotamus, part crocodile.  
  
Some patchwork god made of three.  
  
God plus you is a majority of one. You smile a little at that. It is a question you have pondered. It God really that great?  
  
The numbers of Thoth's digital scale spinning blindly upwards or downwards; the hearts of priests and confessees. It is a question you have pondered: are the hearts of the unworthy heavier or lighter than the feather? Do you even believe in God anymore?  
  
You suppose you should, pretending to be alone in a bedroom that isn't really yours, that you didn't ever earn at all. You only gained it through what you people call lies of omission. What everybody calls lies of omission.  
  
You suppose you should. Some people with MS are not doing as well as you are, in any sense of the term. Some people are not the President of the United States. Most people, in fact, are not President of the United States. The overwhelming majority of people are not President of the United States, and yet they think you lead them. They think you're in charge when it's the numbers of their lives you're trying to make patterns of in the darkened Hall of Two Truths.  
  
It's all relative, as Leo would say.  
  
Your fingers slide up the page, the numbers fold up and fall away like water. None of your daughters are eating chicken, none of them are astronomers. No chance of dying on a Thursday.  
  
The numbers are good, they make sense, they are proper and true and not at all ambiguous. So you put it away. You turn the lamps off and go to bed, because the bed is not empty and you're tired of pretending to sleep alone.  
  
The numbers surge back like waves and sluice over your hands. Baptismal font. Brass shell of holy water at the door. Holy numbers. You like that.  
  
You like the grand metaphysical conceit of a sea of cleansing numbers. Of others floating along down the Nile, down the Ganges, down the Potomac, clinging to their numbers, and you are not alone.  
  
You like thinking that you can fill your heart with good numbers like an incantation on your tombstone. That you can carry it to Thoth in the bright, crowded, lonely Hall of Two Truths and the weight won't bend your back, break your back.  
  
The numbers drifting gently over your hands, like water, like waves; your hands washed by numbers. You like that.  
  
We may be victims, but chances are we're not alone.  
  
  
  
End. 


End file.
